The “Wow” campaign for Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista, features banner ads that might generate a “Wow” because they are broadband video ads instead of traditional static banners. They were included in the campaign to generate excitement and deepen the experience for viewers, according to Jeff Musser, senior VP/creative director for McCann Worldgroup/San Francisco, Microsoft’s advertising agency.
Stacy Nimmo, creative director at Gunshop/San Francisco, said the production company transformed the software icons into oversized “hero graphics,” to compose the banners, which are running at the major sites during a two month campaign. ISPOT spoke with both Musser and Nimmo in our first ever dual iChat, which presents a detailed look at an important campaign.
Interview with Jeff Musser, McCann:
iSPOT: How long has McCann worked for Microsoft?
Musser: McCann has been the agency of record for Microsoft for seven years.
iSPOT: Compare the broadband banner work in the Vista campaign to anything that’s been done before.
Musser: It’s the first time we’ve ever done an entire media buy with broadband. The last major campaign for Windows was “Start Something,” the last push for XP before the new Vista operating system was offered. This is different because of the sheer quantity and the fact they’re all streaming. It’s really unprecedented.
iSPOT: Why did you do it this way?
Musser: The major part of what Vista has to offer is the beauty of the interface and there’s also a lot of depth to the new interface. We wanted to do something that was still simple and highlighted the product in a more abstract way so we focused on these icons. We wanted to capture the beauty of those icons and allude to the beauty of the operating system. We thought the only way we could communicate how beautiful this was was to do streaming to capture the depth and richness, which had to be reduced to a standard Flash banner.
iSPOT: What makes them look beautiful?
Musser: Gunshop did an amazing job of bringing to life these objects. They were just flat small system icons, but they made them have a lot of depth and the lighting on them is really beautiful. The camera moves are spectacular and makes them seem like these big huge things.
iSPOT: How do the broadband banners work with other elements of the campaign?
Musser: Each piece of the media mix was designed to do different things. The campaign is all about “wow.” Wow is the reaction of when you see the product for first time. In TV they’re trying to capture more emotional aspects of that wow, the aspects of your life, big moments and small moments. Print is more about rationally what the product does by presenting different parts of the interface in a heroicized way. Out of home was more icon based like the banner ads, showing one icon at a time and heroicizing them. There’s no sense of scale, they seem really large because there’s nothing else in the ads to show you scale. We wanted to capture that same thing online. The idea behind it was almost like car advertising where you may just see a fender, bumper or other small features of the car that make you want to see more. That was the idea of online, beautiful little slow pans over individual details of elements.
iSPOT: Who was responsible for creating the work at your agency?
Musser: I’m the art director and creative director and Eujin Hong was the writer. A lot of other people were involved along the way, we’ve been working on the campaign for 16 months, so a lot of others touched it along the way.
iSPOT: Where did the video banners run?
Musser: On AOL, Yahoo, ESPN and most of the major sites. It’s only a two month campaign, so we’re going mass to get to the biggest sites possible.
iSPOT: Do you sell an operating system just to people buying new computers or a wider audience?
Musser: It’s both. Most sales are geared to sales of new PCs, but obviously Microsoft doesn’t make PCs they only make the software. There’s a lot of partner involvement and joint promotions with hardware makers.
—
Interview with Stacy Nimmo, Gunshop:
iSPOT: How many different banner videos did you create?
Nimmo: 22, we designed the core elements in different sizes and formats.
iSPOT: Can you describe the videos and what they looked like?
Nimmo: The concept is based on icons because the familiarity people have with software is based on the icons. We took the icons that are the most recognized element of the software and added a lot of value and quality by creating really big ones, hero graphics that make them look like real objects so consumers can have sort of a tactile feel. That relationship between the more tangible feel and the consumer is where they wanted to take it. We took those icons and blew them up using 3D Studio Max to get a high end software look. From that we developed models and used the original icons as references. We created a sense of scale of objects and camera moves that draw you into the piece. You get the full reveal, which is the Wow tag line.
iSPOT: How long are they?
Nimmo: The banners vary in length and size to create something flexible enough to work across different applications. The elements we worked with were key aspects of Vista, including Search and Think Center. We also worked with partners to allow tight integration of software and we showed that.
iSPOT: How did you work with McCann on this?
Nimmo: McCann had strong ideas on how the icons should look and what degree of reality they wanted from reflections to camera moves. We worked very closely to determine the exact look, we did the models and showed them to them and worked as production arm for them.
iSPOT: What were the biggest creative challenges?
Nimmo: Getting a degree of reality in an object which is an icon to make it look as real as possible. It was good for us as a design company to see companies looking at venues other than Flash. As good as Flash is for doing small file weights, it has production limitations. With Vista coming up with a campaign that has a high quality look and finish, it’s opening doors to do more sophisticated approaches in online advertising, to go away from things that are simply moving images to something that’s parallel to broadcast advertising.
iSPOT: You didn’t use Flash?
Nimmo: The final product was compressed in Flash but the elements we designed were done in 3D Studio Max outside of Flash. If Microsoft is taking this gamble it’s great to make that step. McCann’s call to go beyond the limits of simple Flash animation and include embedded movies (created in more sophisticated animation software like After Effects and 3D Studio Max) is a strong vote of confidence in the development on online media, and raises the bar across the board for the sophistication capabilities of the media.
